Spear of the Emperor - Aaron Dembski-Bowden Read online

  ‘Get away from me,’ I said again. Across the chamber, Morcant was watching me. I tried to look as serene as possible, despite wishing I could vomit all over Kartash’s face. ‘And don’t you ever speak her name in my presence, unless it’s in a prayer for forgiveness.’

  Kartash rose. ‘You’re confused, Anuradha. Confused and frightened. That’s perfectly understandable. I’ll check in on you tomorrow.’

  ‘Don’t. Not tomorrow. Not ever. Stay away from me, Kartash.’

  He smiled sadly, indulgently, even offering a knowing nod to the nearby orderlies. Then he limped his way from the chamber, making the sign of the aquila to Morcant as he passed the warrior. Morcant nodded in response, then went back to watching me.

  Chief Medicae Officer Owyn returned, raising his thin, grey eyebrows at the damage I’d done to my bed.

  ‘I see there’s no issue with the grip strength in your new limb. Try not to destroy your bed, however. You’re not getting a new one.’

  ‘He tried to kill me, Owyn.’

  ‘Yes, so you’ve said.’

  ‘What? When?’

  ‘When you drifted in and out of consciousness in the first few days. We had a servitor record everything you murmured in your delirium, and the Spears have been monitoring it for signs of hidden taint. You also said he had a sword made of alien metals and crystals. I shouldn’t need to point out, but I will anyway, that his quarters and possessions were searched thoroughly and there was no sign of such a weapon.’

  Someone had believed me enough to make certain, then. That was a start, even if it resulted in nothing but proving my delusion.

  ‘There’s some good news,’ Owyn added. ‘We’re going to try something new with your eye tomorrow.’

  3

  My eye socket itched abominably. There was no chance the Spears’ medicae staff could grant me another terminus-eye, and it wasn’t as if I’d used the one I had wisely or well. Still, it stung to lose such a prestigious gift in favour of a simple bionic.

  Dealing with my eye turned out to be a foul process. Owyn had already scraped the socket clean and flushed it with antiseptic fluids, but the infection kept returning. He came to my bed after the second failure, accompanied by a towering figure in growling black ceramite. I recognised his bearded features, with the talon-scar tattoos on his cheeks.

  ‘War-priest Ducarius.’

  ‘Anuradha,’ he greeted me in return, distracted and plainly tired. His massive hand gripped the top of my head. He turned my face side to side, peering into the eye that was no longer there. He was less gentle than Nar Kezar, but entirely less unnerving.

  ‘Hold still.’

  I was holding still. I told him so.

  ‘Then hold stiller.’

  I asked him how I could hold stiller than already being absolutely still.

  ‘Well, you could stop talking,’ he pointed out. Ducarius nodded at whatever he saw in my augmetic eye socket, and clacked his scrimshawed teeth. ‘Here. This’ll do it.’

  He drew a glass vial from one of his belt pouches, full of a bubbling white liquid. It took me a second to see it wasn’t a liquid at all, but hundreds of tiny squirming bodies bunched up together.

  With a care I’d never believed possible, using tweezers clutched with inhuman precision in his huge hand, the Spear druid placed the maggots, one after the other, in my eye socket.

  ‘They’ll eat the infected flesh,’ he said to me, and then to Owyn he added, ‘Replace them in two days, before they split and become flies.’

  The itching, which had been irritating, now became maddening. Foolishly, I mentioned this out loud.

  ‘If you want a new eye,’ said Ducarius, ‘you’ll do what it takes to get one.’

  With Ducarius here, this was my chance. I had to take it. ‘Where’s Amadeus? They told me he’s still alive.’

  Ducarius said nothing for a moment. ‘He’s alive, aye. It remains to be seen for how much longer.’

  ‘What did the Pure do to him?’

  ‘Be calm, Anuradha.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘This isn’t calm.’

  ‘Tell me what they did to him!’

  ‘Restrain her,’ Owyn called to two of his orderlies.

  Something a little like Tyberia’s voice broke inside me, and I snapped at Owyn, ‘If you tie me down, you better never set me free again, because I’ll beat you to death with the new arm you gave me. You have your duty, and I have mine. I’m going to do it. I’m going to see my master.’

  Ducarius finally nodded. ‘Take her to him.’

  4

  Tyberia had suffered at the hands of the Exilarchy’s mutants, and what they brought back to me after they’d had their fun had no right to still be alive. Amadeus had endured excruciation far beyond that. He was capable of withstanding far greater physical damage, because of his transhuman form, and he had been in the clutches of Nar Kezar, a true artist of pain, rather than brutal mutants.

  The Exilarchy had killed him. He just wasn’t dead yet.

  I sat by the slab table where he was cobwebbed in medical cables. The walk here had been difficult and joyless on my new leg, but what awaited offered no solace. My master breathed because machines breathed for him. The devastating thing wasn’t that they’d hacked away at him or removed his limbs. It was that he was still in one piece, with every bone and organ and inch of tissue showing signs of ritual mutilation. They’d taken him apart while keeping him whole.

  I looked at the screens that showed me all this, and then I looked at Amadeus, living on the edge of death. His eyes were closed. Even the eyelids were scabbed and scarred.

  ‘Suspended animation?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’ Ducarius kept his voice soft. ‘He sleeps. Deeply.’

  ‘Why haven’t you given him the Emperor’s peace?’

  Ducarius looked wearier than I’d ever seen one of the Adeptus ­Astartes appear. ‘We are the Spears of the Emperor,’ he said bluntly, ‘and we need every warrior we have. We don’t mercy-kill our brethren unless death is absolutely certain.’

  I gestured at the ruination that had once been my master. ‘Death is certain. I’m only half-blind, Ducarius. He can’t survive this. No one can.’

  He ignored my informality. ‘You’re wrong, helot. I can stabilise him with a little more time. Another few surgeries and he may even breathe on his own.’

  Hope flared. The most treasonous of all emotions. ‘You mean to inter him,’ I guessed. ‘You’ll bind him into a Dreadnought.’ I couldn’t equate the image of my master as he’d been, and as he might become, locked within the life support coffin of an Adeptus Astartes war machine. It wasn’t life as Amadeus had known it, but at least it was life.

  But Ducarius bristled. ‘No, Anuradha. Internment is a rare and precious rite, and those sarcophagi are treasured rewards for the greatest Spears. The Chapter would never sanction such a sacrifice on your master’s behalf.’

  ‘What, then? This isn’t life, Ducarius. Amadeus would despise living as this revenant, slaved to machines that force him to exist.’

  The druid brought up a hololith from his vambrace, showing yet more of the extensive internal damage inflicted upon my master.

  ‘He’ll never fight with a blade and bolter again, but he can command ships and give orders to skitarii. He can fight for the Veil, as Serivahn fights. And after the Exilarchy did this to him, he’ll want revenge. We’re counting on it.’

  More than anything. I lowered my hands. I’d not realised they’d been pressed to my mouth, as if a barricade over my lips could contain my fears.

  ‘Captain Serivahn is… malformed,’ I admitted, ‘but my master is devastated. He’ll never walk again. Even his heart tissue is scarred. Both of his hearts. What will be left of him to serve? A brain in a glass tank?’

  ‘There’ll be extensive augmetic rescu
lpturing,’ Ducarius admitted. ‘I’d say over sixty per cent of his body will require bionic replacement.’

  ‘To make what? A servitor with a Space Marine’s mind?’

  Ducarius met my eyes. His gaze bored into mine, pinning me with merciless patience. ‘You’ve been in the Exilarchy’s clutches, thrall. You’ve seen the Pure. You know what the Adeptus Vaelarii face here in the Veil. We use every weapon available to us. A broken sword still has an edge. A broken rifle still serves as a club. We fight with what we’ve got. After the last two months, you should understand that without reservation. Come. Return to your ward.’

  ‘I’m not leaving him.’ The steel in my voice surprised me. It wasn’t just duty talking, I knew that even then. With Tyberia gone and Kartash a traitor, Amadeus was all I had. The idiocy of that sentiment didn’t make it any less true. ‘I’m staying here.’

  ‘Very well.’

  With those words, the druid left me alone with my master. I didn’t know what to say to Amadeus. It didn’t really matter. It wasn’t as if he could hear me.

  ‘My eye socket itches,’ I told him. ‘It has maggots in it.’

  Amadeus made no comment.

  Within an hour, three of Owyn’s orderlies brought me a new surgical bed, so I might share my master’s chamber. Not long after lying down, I fell asleep to the sounds of Amadeus’ respirator.

  Was I free now? Was I no longer a slave to the Mentor Legion?

  And if so… What did that mean? What could I do now? Who was I?

  I dreamed of fire in black tunnels, not for the first time, and not for the last.

  XIX

  VICISSITUDES

  1

  Little by little, my healers and hosts drip-fed me information. Owyn was the best source of it, though Ducarius, Brêac and, on one occasion, Serivahn were useful in their own ways.

  Morcant remained on guard in the main ward, and only infrequently checked on my master and I. Each time he did, he was as conversational as a tongueless servitor. No change, there.

  Owyn spent time with me each day. I suspected I’d become a pet project of his, not least because in studying me he gained access to data pertaining to the advanced bionics used by the Mentors Chapter. Most of my original augmetics were damaged or gone, replaced now by standard Imperial designs, but he could see the stories told in damaged nerve endings and bone fusions.

  I spent most of my convalescence at Amadeus’ side. It would be right to say he drifted in and out of consciousness, since the abuse his body and mind had suffered did pull him down into irregular healing slumbers. At times he lingered on the edge of biological shutdown, when his sus-an membrane would have taken hold and allowed him to drift into a physiological suspended animation.

  But it’s far more accurate to say he drifted in and out of awareness. There were times he was awake and times he was comatose. There were times he knew me and times he did not. On more than one occasion he talked to me as if I were his mother or his sister and he were still a boy. My lingering oaths to the Mentor Legion forbid me from recording those words here, but what I learned through those mumbled delusions suggested a happy childhood from a deeply philosophical warrior caste, on a world I won’t name.

  One of the times he recognised me, when his thoughts were clearest, he ordered me from his sight. He wouldn’t say why, but I suspected he was gripped by the shame of being reduced to ruin. I didn’t obey, and there was nothing he could do to make me obey. He was unconscious again before another minute had passed, anyway.

  The Pure had done their work well. A Space Marine fallen to the Ruinous Powers, willingly or in ignorance, makes for the ­bitterest enemy. A fallen Space Marine knows all his loyal brethren’s virtues and vices, their strengths and flaws. They see the chinks in the mental and physical armour, and can exploit it better than any other foe.

  Nar Kezar had intimately known that no Space Marine can be broken through traditional torture. The unrelenting physicality of an Adeptus Astartes warrior is their greatest psychological advantage, not only in war but in their own psyches. They cannot be turned from their duty. They cannot be frightened into retreat. Most of all, they cannot be physically intimidated. A warrior of any Chapter would face a beggar or a demigod with the same zeal in his heart, intimi­dated by the physical threat of neither one. One of the reasons we say they know no fear is because, even alone, they have a chance of overcoming any foe our hateful ­galaxy can throw at them.

  And that’s what the Exilarchy stole from Amadeus. That surety. That vitality. That enduring strength that had made him so much more than mortal.

  Now he was weak. Helpless. Enslaved in a way – not bound into servitude as I’d been enslaved, but bound within a useless shell. Too weak to live. Too alive to die. Even theoretical talk of internment within a Dreadnought chassis became moot once I saw the scans myself: Nar Kezar and his Basilisk torturers had burned away many of the neural pathways that were necessary for integration inside a war machine’s sarcophagus. There was no question that it was anything but intentional. With malicious cunning, they’d denied him even the living death of a Dreadnought’s existence.

  And that was vicious enough, aye, but there was a chance it would also affect his body and brain’s ability to interface with his power armour.

  They’d left him with the ability to speak, of course. The Pure had hoped, all the while, to milk him for information.

  ‘Helot Secundus,’ he said to me one day, in the voice of a dying giant.

  I was on the walking conveyor provided for my rehabili­tation, moving on the spot as the rubberised track flowed beneath me. The rhythm of my movement was the soft drumming of my bare foot and the rattle-clank-thud of my industrial claw, over and over again.

  With a flick of my thumb, I slowed the conveyor and moved to Amadeus’ side. It remained to be seen just how aware of his surroundings he would be. It varied day by day, sometimes hour by hour.

  What was left of him looked up at me. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot and sclera-stained with fluid from ­internal ruptures.

  ‘Where is Nar Kezar?’

  ‘Captured,’ I explained for at least the tenth time. ‘The Spears are holding him in the brig.’ The other Basilisks had been executed or killed in the battle, but their lord was a precious prize to be interrogated over time.

  Amadeus absorbed that, though I doubted it would stick this time any more than it had the other times. Except, this time, it did.

  ‘Wait,’ Amadeus said, with irritated wonder. ‘Captured. He is in the brig. You have told me that before.’

  This was new. I swallowed before answering, ‘Yes, master.’

  ‘And the Venatrix.’ His sliced lips formed the words with a sense of annoyed care. ‘It is dead, is it not? You said it was dead.’

  ‘Scuttled. Dead at the hands of the Hex and–’

  ‘And the Blade,’ he said. ‘The Blade of the Seventh Son. You have told me that, as well.’

  ‘Yes, master.’

  ‘I have seen it.’

  ‘Yes, master.’ Which was also true. We’d watched gun-picter footage of the Venatrix’s death several times. It was always just as satisfying as the first time, watching the warship come apart in the void, bleeding fire into the night.

  Amadeus looked at me, aggravated by his weakness for once instead of just at its mercy. ‘Where is your terminus-eye?’

  He’d never asked that before. I touched the bandaged socket, but he answered before I could. ‘No,’ he said, with growing surety. ‘You lost it when we were boarded. One of the Pure pulled it from your skull. I promised you a new one.’

  ‘Yes, master. You did.’

  ‘I cannot move.’

  He couldn’t move because his muscles were lacerated strips of meat and his bones had been surgically ­pulverised in places. Many of his bones had hairline cracks riven through them, as if a decei
tful blacksmith had forged flaws inside the blade of a sword. Such lovingly inflicted mutilation, performed with such craftsmanship, spoke of deeply ­diseased minds.

  ‘You’re wounded, master. Badly.’

  ‘My mouth,’ he said. ‘Would you wipe it for me.’

  That was the first time I could remember an order coming out almost as a question. I did as he asked, cleaning the edge of his lips, catching a trickle of bloody saliva on a sterile cloth. The rag hissed and smoked. Fire shot through the tips of my fingers.

  I cursed as I dropped the cloth. Three of my fingertips were bleeding.

  ‘Nh. Forgive me,’ said Amadeus. He was tonguing the inner reaches of his mouth and wincing. ‘I did not know my saliva was acid-infused. I cannot control my Betcher’s gland.’

  He kept watching me as I doused my newest injuries, technically friendly fire, with cleansing solution.

  ‘Helot Secundus Daaz,’ he said to me. His voice was weakening again.

  ‘Yes, master?’

  ‘Where is Helot Primus Avik?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t care.’ Nor did I care that my words were a violation of mission parameters. The Nemeton Deployment had already gone wrong in every imaginable way. ‘He’s a traitor.’

  Amadeus was fading fast, his eyes glazing over with healing serenity. ‘You have said that before, as well. The strange sword. The capture of yourself and Helot Tertius Volos.’

  ‘Yes, master.’

  I expected him to call me foolish and deride me as he had all the times I’d told him the truth in the past. For once, he drifted away without judging me. Instead, his words were strained and sincere. He was drooling acid again.

  ‘Thank you. For watching. Over me. You are very. Loyal. Anuradha.’

  Am I?

  ‘It’s my duty,’ I said.

  ‘Nnh. I am sorry. For what happened. To Tyberia Volos.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve expressed that her death was “regrettable” before, master.’

  ‘No.’ Amadeus struggled to shake his head on dead muscles. ‘The failure. Was mine.’